Bhubaneswar, June 27: Somnath Parida, the retired army doctor who allegedly killed his wife and cut her body into hundreds of pieces, today dismissed murder charges against him and dismissed the “mysterious” woman angle to the incident.

Police today brought him on three-day remand for interrogation. The cops are yet to seize the murder weapon and find the motive behind the crime.

The septuagenarian, who was a lieutenant colonel in the Indian Army, told mediapersons outside the Jharpada jail that he loved his wife and dismissed reports about his link with another woman.

“Those who make such allegations are fools,” he said. He said he was prepared to hang if this charge was found to be true. However, the accused showed no signs of remorse even after spending almost five days in jail.

Asserting that he was being framed, the doctor said the post-mortem report could not be sufficient evidence against him. Parida had told police earlier that his wife had committed suicide and he had then chopped up her body to preserve for cremation in Shirdi.

Cops said the accused had stuck to his earlier version during interrogation. On the night of June 21, Nayapalli police found out about the incident when Parida’s wife Ushashree’s relatives went to check on his wife and he did not allow them to enter his house. The next day, police seized 22 containers of mutilated remains of Ushashree’s body preserved in chemicals.

The cops said they would try to find the weapon that had been used to murder the woman. The post-mortem report revealed that Ushahsree’s skull had multiple injuries that were homicidal in nature. Her head had been battered with some weapon. “Though the weapons used to chop up the body were recovered from the house, we are yet to seize the weapon used to kill her. On June 22, Parida had told us that she had committed suicide by banging her head on the cot. We also found blood on the bed. We suspect he hit her head on the cot. We are yet to verify this,” said a police officer. He said that if Parida did not co-operate with them, they would seek a lie-detector test.

Deputy commissioner of police Nitinjeet Singh said the cops had enough evidence against Parida.

In another development, Government Railway Police (GRP) recorded the statements of the wife and two sons of IAS officer Gagan Bihari Swain, 59, who committed suicide on Monday by jumping in front of a train. Cops last night interrogated the father of Swain’s younger son’s fiancée. The bureaucrat’s son’s wedding has been fixed for June 30 and officials suspect that the wedding might have spurred the suicide. An officer quoted Swain’s wife Namita as saying that he was very upset on day of the incident when he came home for lunch.